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   <title>Feature Archives</title>
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<h1>
Feature Archives</h1>
<p>The feature packaging information is placed into a separate Java .jar.
Standard Java jar facilities are used for constructing feature archives.
Feature archives reference separately packaged plug-in archives (see next
section) and non-plug-in files.</p><p>Features are identified using a structured identifier based on the provider
internet domain name. For example, organization eclipse.org produces
feature org.eclipse.jdt. The character set used for feature identifiers
is as specified for plug-in identifiers (see <a href="plugin_manifest.html">Plug-in
Manifest</a>).</p>
<p>The recommended convention for naming the feature archives is
<br><code>&lt;id&gt;_&lt;version&gt;.jar</code> </p>
<p>Where <code>&lt;id&gt;</code> is the feature identifier and <code>&lt;version&gt;</code>
is the full version identifier contained in the respective feature.xml.
Note that this is a recommended convention that minimizes chance of collisions,
but is not required by the Eclipse architecture. For example, the following
are valid feature archive names</p>
<p><code>org.eclipse.jdt_2.0.0.jar</code>
<br><code>org.eclipse.pde_2.0.jar</code>
<br><code>my_feature.jar</code></p>
<p>Internally, each feature archive is packaged relative to its feature
directory (but not including the directory path element). The archive has
the following structure	</p>
<p><code>feature.xml</code>
<br><code>feature&lt;_locale&gt;.properties (see "Translated Feature Information")</code>
<br><code>other feature files and subdirectories (TBD)</code>
<br><code>META-INF/</code>
<br><code>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Java jar manifest and security files</code>
</p>
Note that feature archives do not contain their constituent plug-ins and fragments.


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